Gas Station Venmo Shots
by ac0llecti0n0fn0nsense
Summary: Lily Evans sings ABBA and James Potter has a shit cup of coffee. Modern AU oneshot written for Jily Summerfest.


It was the kind of hot that day that made the long stretch of road look hazy, like a mirage spreading for miles and miles down the interstate. Cold air sputtered from the just-functioning air conditioning of her ancient Buick as she clicked her glossy red nails against the wheel in time with the music. David Bowie blasted through the speakers, loud enough that she couldn't hear her own tone-deaf voice shouting the lyrics she knew by heart, a painted red smile on her face and round, stark-white sunglasses shading her eyes.

Lily Evans laughed as she finished the last song with a flourish of her arms, as if she was bowing to an audience. "Thank you, thank you very much," she added theatrically in response to the clicking of the cassette tape in the stereo, "I'll be here for – oh, another two hours."

Internally she groaned at the realization that she was barely halfway done with her drive. Fuck, it was a long way from home to her university. Lily was taking summer classes this year to try and get her undergrad done in three years instead of four; she had who knows how many years of med school to look forward to, and didn't think summers off were worth extending that purgatory. She had gone home, planning to visit her parents for a bit before selling her soul for a four point, but upon realizing that her older sister Petunia was supposed to stay there for the next month as well, had booked it out of town in record time.

Two hours left on the road to nowhere and she had almost run out of cassette tapes already – the tape player was the only part of her stereo that still worked. She felt that oxygen-rich tiredness that was actually just boredom in disguise, but Lily knew this road like the back of her hand and the next gas station that had semi-decent coffee was still a half hour away.

Actually, the next _town_ was a half hour away. The only thing between Lily and her caffeine was miles of flat, flat farmland. Lots of cows.

Lily stifled a yawn with one hand and knew it was time to bring out the big guns. She popped in her well-worn ABBA cassette and cranked up the stereo as loud as it would go, the spiraling sound of the intro already waking her up.

" _Ooh you can dance, you can ji-ive, having the time of your life,_ " Lily sang pointing down the roads as if staring down an audience, " _See that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen."_

She continued on with her private concert as the tape moved through those classic anthems, executing her best disco dance moves within the confines of the car, shimmying her shoulders and wiggling her hips in her seat as she went. Lily laughed at her own ridiculous antics, her heart bubbling in wonder at how terribly big the world seemed as she drove on those empty country roads, at all the places she could go with just the turn of the steering wheel. At how full of possibility her life was in this very moment.

As if on cue an engine roared past her, shattering Lily's little bubble. It was one of those ugly modern Mustangs, a garish blue color that made the car look cheap even though she was sure it cost more than her annual tuition. _Shit,_ she nearly jumped through her seatbelt as it passed her; she was so used to driving along this road all alone that she had nearly forgotten that other people exist. She had been so in the zone she hadn't even noticed anyone driving up behind her.

A car like that, she was expecting it to race past her, driving like speed limits didn't exist – which might as well be the truth, seeing as they were never enforced on this stretch of road. She was surprised, then, when the Mustang suddenly began slowly down until it was even with her in the adjacent lane. Confused, she glanced at the car, trying to figure out what the deal was. Then she did a double take.

The first thing she noticed was that the owner of that atrocious car was _sinfully_ attractive. Like, take me as you will, fuck me in a back-alley kind of attractive. He had darkly tanned skin that melted her insides like butter, and curly black hair that looked like he had just rolled out of bed. And his grin – which he was for some inexplicably magnificent reason was aiming at her – that beautiful, shit-eating grin made her want to punch a wall with all of the sexual tension it was coiling up inside her and –

And that's when she noticed that he wasn't just grinning. He was _laughing_. At _her_.

Oh shit. Oh shit, shit, _shit_ , it's not like this beautiful creature had simply materialized out of nowhere from the sheer force of Lily's wishful thinking. No, he must have been driving behind her, for who knows _how_ long. And that meant he saw –

Obviously noticing he had her attention now, the little fucker raised his hands and started to _applaud_.

Lily seriously considered driving into a ditch then to save herself the overwhelming embarrassment of having the most attractive human being she had ever seen laughing at the kind of dancing that _should_ have never, _ever_ been seen. Then she readjusted her thinking, reminding herself that she had a bright future in the medical field ahead of her, and found that the obvious solution was to drive _him_ off the road. No witnesses, the perfect crime.

Plus, The Fucker (her new pet name for him) was still laughing.

" _Noooo_ ," Lily groaned aloud, barely resisting the temptation to bang her head against the steering wheel ( _her defensive driving course reminding her to keep her eyes on the road_ ). This was the kind of deep-rooted embarrassment, like accidentally hugging a stranger, that would haunt her for the next decade.

And The Fucker was still driving right next to her, as if waiting for her to respond.

Well, she had a response for him, alright. Her go-to defensive move when dealing with catcallers and fuckboys, and the only nonverbal gesture she knew that really captured all she was feeling at the moment.

She flipped him the bird.

And he laughed again, throwing back his head in an arc that Lily couldn't help but watch in fascination and wonder, his smile full of sunshine. She suddenly felt she would have paid her weight in textbooks to hear that laugh.

But all he did was give her one last ( _earth-shattering, heart-palpitating, butterfly-birthing_ ) grin and sped off down the road, leaving nothing but dust for her to remember him by.

Dust, and the memory of a face that she was sure ( _hoped, dreaded_ ) she would find in her dreams.

 _That little fucker._

Lily switched her ABBA tape out for Blondie, no longer in the mood for disco.

Twenty minutes later (still ten minutes out from her beloved gas station coffee, an absolute tragedy) Lily saw a hint of prom-dress blue in the distance.

"No fucking way," she breathed as she drove past (more slowly than she ever drove in this interstate) the sight of The Fucker bent over the popped hood of his Mustang, running a hand through his mop of curls in the process.

"Just keep driving, just keep driving," Lily muttered to herself, clutching the steering wheel tightly as she tried to steel herself against the magnetic pull she felt towards that atrocious car. At worst he could be a serial killer; at best, he was an asshole who had laughed at her dancing, and she had _moves_.

"No taste," she clucked in disapproval.

She pulled a U-turn half a mile later.

"Having car trouble?" Lily called to The Fucker five minutes later as she got out of the car. Immediately she cursed herself because _duh_ he was having car trouble, and now he was smirking at her like an idiot. Like _she_ was an idiot, which apparently she was when in this close of proximity to that level of attractiveness.

( _He looked even better up close_.)

And he was wearing that absolute heart-stopping grin, aiming it right at her. "Shit I'm glad you stopped, Carl's is like a ten-minute drive from here and probably five hours walking, and no cars ever come this way. I was sure I was dead meat. I could actually kiss you right now," The Fucker told her, a real sense of relief spreading across his beautiful face before he paused uncomfortably, "Not that I ever would because that just feels like the beginning of an SVU episode." He winced at himself visibly ( _adorably, wait no, stop that_ ), "Not that I'd _never_ kiss you because, I mean _look_ at you. Wait, shit, now I'm giving off _major_ Ted Bundy vibes. Okay, please just leave me to die, I littered a couple of months ago so it's probably karma anyways." The Fucker proceeded to stick his head into the engine and attempt to close the hood over himself.

"Wait, no, it's fine," Lily laughed, grabbing onto the hood to prevent his apparent suicide ( _and noticing she was suddenly quite close to him and shit he had nice arms_ ), and said the first thing that came to her mind, "You go to Carl's?"

He swung his head out from the engine, looking at her in interest, "Well yeah, best shitty cup of coffee on the interstate, of _course_ I go to Carl's. Pus it's the perfect halfway point between the city and university."

"You go to the university?" she asked in surprise ( _apparently her default when it came to him_ ), "So do I! On the way back there now, unfortunately." She punctuated her sentence with the long-suffering sigh of a person whose soul has been crushed by academia.

"Bullshit," The Fucker said suddenly, making her jump, "You can't go there, there's _no way_ I would have missed you on campus."

Lily felt her cheeks flaming, battling her hair for title of most tomato-like. "Flattery will get you everywhere," she tried to reply snarkily back, but she couldn't help the smile that crept up on her face as she scooted next to him to get a good look at the engine, "Anyways, what seems to be the problem? My dad works at a garage and I spent a lot of time there growing up, so maybe I can help."

"Hell if I know," he replied ruefully, "I'm completely technology illiterate, down to the most basic pulley system. It's a miracle I'm even allowed to drive."

She snorted. "I'm actually impressed," Lily said as she returned to her own car to grab the mini fix-it kit her dad had insisted on always keeping in the trunk of her car, just in case, "Guys usually can't wait to show off their 'knowledge' about cars." Most of what they knew about cars was bullshit, and an excuse to get her in the backseat of a car that was _certainly_ compensating for something.

He was leaning against the side of his car now, watching her work, his grey t-shirt clinging to his _fit_ body in a way that was entirely too distracting. "If I needed to use a car to compensate for something, I wouldn't have bought such a shit car," he smirked back at her.

Lily looked at him disbelieving ( _trying to ignore his pointed remark that he obviously had nothing to compensate for, and all of its implications_ ). "It's a _Mustang_ ," she deadpanned.

"Correction: it's a _shit_ Mustang," he chuckled, "Everyone knows this era of Mustangs was awful."

"Then why'd you buy it?" Lily asked as she tinkered with the engine. Really, it was all good to go now, but she was unashamedly drawing this out, quite willing to end their conversation.

"I have a thing for ugly cars," he replied, pulling at his hair again ( _and Lily felt herself drool a little_ ), "Don't know why, easier to find in a parking lot? There's just something about them, you know, they seem so much more real, more _present_ , than a silver Honda Civic, you know?"

Lily cocked her head at him because she knew _exactly_ what he was talking about, but no one had ever gotten it before, put it into words. Her love of ugly things, like her _terrible_ Buick Lesabre, or the color puce, books with yellow pages and water stains, and the plates at Goodwill that someone had a _very_ good reason to give away. She loved to see them, touch them, because this strange boy was right, all the ugly things in the world felt so much more _grounding_ than those airbrushed magazine covers and Good Housekeeping living rooms.

(It drove her roommates insane.)

"Why are you looking at me like that?" the boy asked her with an amused smile, "Did I peg you wrong and you're about to murder me with an ice pick?"

"Really, an ice pick?" she laughed back, "I'm literally holding a wrench right now and you choose an ice pick as my murder weapon? Anyways you're lucky I'm helping you at all right now after you made fun of my car-dancing." _Shit, she hadn't meant to bring that up_.

"I was making fun of you," he told her, his head tilted as he gave her a serious look ( _and he was pulling at his hair again, almost nervously this time_ ), "I was – fuck I don't know, you looked so damn _happy_ and I just thought it was the greatest thing I've seen in a decade and I kind of, ugh this sounds so weird, but I kind of wanted to be a part of it, you know?"

 _Fuck_ , she melted at that, how could someone be so nervous and dorky but so smooth at the same time? It was really against the laws of nature, shouldn't be allowed, completely unfair –

"Are you sure we haven't met somehow?" he asked her, his ( _fucking dreamy_ ) hazel eyes looking at her curiously, "I feel like – god I sound cheesy, but I feel like we've met before."

"I spend all of my time locked up in the library so unless you stalk the stacks, probably not," Lily chuckled, pointing at herself, "Pre-med, yeah?"

"Mmm, makes sense," he smiled, "I'm on a soccer scholarship so I do most of my studying on the road in between matches and all that."

Lily hummed in agreement and a silence settled between them, comfortable except for the feeling, the yearning, for something _more_.

He straightened up suddenly, reaching a hand out to her, "James Potter by the way, feels weird that I haven't introduced myself yet."

Lily felt her eyes widened as she stared at his outstretched hand. " _No fucking way_ ," she breathed, " _You're_ James Potter? Sirius's roommate James Potter? Shit, I'm going to _kill_ him for not telling me how fit you are –"

"Wait," James said, talking over her, "Fucking hell, you're Lily Evans, aren't you? Biology hottie Lily Evans? He's been trying to-"

"Hook us up for a year," Lily finished with him, smiling wide, "Yeah, that would be me."

"That's it," James said, throwing his hands up and dramatically stomping away, "The entire universe is bullshit. We've gone to the same school for two years with a _dozen_ mutual friends and somehow never ended up on a date together? I'm calling it, there is no God and life is meaningless."

Lily was grinning like a loon at him, leaning against his ugly-ass car and watching him go into near hysterics like he was giving her a declaration of love. "Well we ended up here, didn't we?" she tried to call over his ranting, "That has to mean something, right?"

He stopped mid-rant, rushing over to her with his own silly grin. "You're completely right," he said, grabbing her hand and shaking it energetically, "It's official: Lily Evans, meet James Potter. Want to go get a coffee with me at Carl's?" His gaze flickered briefly to his car. "If this wonderful piece of junk makes it, that it."

"I hope you're not doubting my mechanic skills," she teased _(unable to stop noticing that he was still holding her hand_ ), "But yes, James, I would love to go get a shit cup of coffee with you."

She glanced over her shoulder at him as she walked to her car, taking in his smile that looked like he had just won the lottery, and couldn't help the swoop in her stomach.

Maybe, just _maybe_ , after an appropriate number of dates and all that because Lily was quite picky and still not one hundred percent sure he wasn't a potential serial killer, but _maybe_ she might allow him to take the little nickname she had given him more literally.

Lily blared her ABBA all the way down the interstate.


End file.
